License to POLL: Which is the best track on Bob Dylan's 'Infidels'?

Once during rehearsals the cops showed up right?

The neighbors used to complain. As far away as the houses were next to Bob – which was quite far, the property as pretty large – sound travels. We played loud. We’d been told before to turn it down.

That one day [when the cops came], Bob just hightailed it into the back room. He just said, “Tell them you’re playing with Waylon Jennings.”

Incredible.

Dylan as guy who talks mad shit about the cops at a party until the cops actually show up:CONFIRMED

This story gets better and better. I just got to the part about Liberace.

So what happens right after? You finish “Jokerman” on a weird note with the harmonica, you walk off, how does the evening end?

It's kind of a blur at this point. I think we went out to a bar, just me and the band. Dylan split. He went to a Knicks game.

"I'll tell everything I know."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Start_Me_Talkin%27

Bob had this big reel-to-reel tape machine. He liked to record the stuff and listen to it later too, but Bob didn't know how to work the reel-to-reel. Every time he tried to use it, the reels would just go flying and spinning. It was a clusterfuck.

This sounds like a hilarious scene in a Bob Dylan comedy I want to see. Maybe the one he bailed on because it was "too slapsticky."

Dylan as guy who talks mad shit about the cops at a party until the cops actually show up:CONFIRMED

Cops a comin', me a runnin'

"I didn't know whether to duck or to run so I ran"

that double e's interview is a real treat! looking forward to his book

The word we're using is “jamming,” but can you talk about what specifically that means? What are you actually doing for eight hours a day?

We wouldn't really talk about what we were doing. We would just we go in the room. Bob would take out the guitar and just start strumming a couple chords. We all just fall in and jam on something.

Is he singing or is this mostly instrumental?

It was mostly instrumental, though he would mumble under stuff. Not really sing words.

Some of these are songs, some are things I think he's working on in his head. We recognize a few of the older songs, but it was a lot of just getting a groove and a vibe.

So we would just play on a song for 15, 20 minutes, looking out over the Pacific. It was a whole different experience in what we were used to. We didn't do that in our punk bands, where the songs were two minutes long.

Is it musically satisfying, or are you looking at your watch by minute 15 of the same song?

Totally satisfying. Are you kidding? There was none of that “we're working” vibe. We're making music and it feels good.

Yeah, maybe he was at least sometimes thinking about writing, seeing if it might come his way---reminds me of Malibu barn session w Carole Bayer Sager: https://www.vulture.com/2016/10/bob-dylan-carole-bayer-sager-book-excerpt.html

("Elizabeth" referred to is Elizabeth Taylor--says later in her memoir that he came to the party that Sayer gave for Taylor's 55th birthday.)

haha that's a great one, thanks

I refocused. “So, do you have any ideas of what you feel like writing?”

“Well, I’ve got a little bit of an idea.”

He mumbled his words very softly. I thought he said “I godda libble bid a deer.”

they really should do an anthology of these working with bob memories

Still, "Jokerman" is in my top five Dylan.

they really should do an anthology of these working with bob memories
Yes, these two were great.

“I godda libble bid a deer.”

I fought LOLing and almost spit my coffee upon reading this

Somehow reminds me of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgA34GXWj0o

Really?
― Naive Teen Idol,

Really.

I like the song fine, but that seems a little odd for a guy with Dylan’s songbook.

Why? It's as great a song as any, and I've been blasting it since 1999. I'd rather listen to it right now than "Tangled Up in Blue."

Yeah, I think "Jokerman" is a great song. Maybe not one of my absolute favorites, or even my favorite from those sessions (I probably prefer "I and I," "Blind Willie McTell" and "Foot of Pride"), but it's one of his best from that era.

FWIW, here's Michael Bolton of all people on his collaboration.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/michael-bolton-interview-bob-dylan-steel-bars-912917/

I always wondered if Dylan did some songwriting collaborations just to pump up his cash flow - he hasn't shown any interest in Bolton's music before or after, but he knew Bolton's albums sold in a huge numbers, so even one co-songwriting credit is lucrative. (Not that he's strapped for cash, but when you get used to a way of living and have a lot of your money in various things, you don't want to cut back if you don't have to.) Besides songwriting collaborations, another trick he seems to use is getting big-selling acts to cover his songs, like when he pitched "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" to Guns n' Roses. (Rose: “Bob asked me, ‘When you gonna record ‘Heaven’s Door’? And I said, ‘I don’t know, but we really love that song.’ And he said, ‘I don’t give a fuck. I just want the money.’ True story!”) This was before Dylan had the Bootleg Series going at full speed and when his own new releases weren't catching on.

He co-wrote a song with Gene Simmons during this period too.

I was going to say his divorce might have had something to do with it, but that wasn't finalized until 1992. (I don't have any experience with it, but maybe the costs add up earlier?)

When people called the 1978 tour the alimony tour, that wasn't just a joke - he really was in need of money due to the cost of the divorce AND sinking in way too much of his own money into Renaldo and Clara. (Keeping the editing/post-production up and running for any film for two or three years will be very costly, much moreso when one person is bearing the expense instead of a large company.)

Simmons recalled in an interview with For Bass Players Only back in 2018 that everything started when he simply made a phone call. The musician said that he is a very linear person and he is delusionally fearless. Because of that personality, even that he was thinking ‘Why the fuck would he want to write with me?’ he decided to call Dylan’s manager because maybe for some reason he would like to. “Throw caution to the wind, and dive into the deep end of the pool. So I called his manager, a good guy, ‘“Hi, Can I speak with Bob?'”, the manager then replied: “‘What do you wanna talk to him about?'” and Simmons said: “‘I, uh, I want to write a song with Bob.”

All of the sudden, within two days, an unmarked van shows up at my house. Bob gets out with an acoustic guitar and tells his driver ‘I’ll see you at the end of the day’. We start strumming! It was just like that. And he was asking ME, and this is in the box set, ‘So, how do you write songs?’.

“Well, you know, I come up with stuff, and Paul writes stuff.” Bob replied: “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then the other guys play it?”. Gene answered: “Well, I usually tell them what parts to play.” He goes, “You do?” And I couldn’t believe I was having this discussion. Yeah, we were talking about how we write songs. It’s still a life highlight, if you see what I mean.”

love the idea of Bob telling his van driver, "Pick me at 4, I'm writing with Gene here."

Ah, here's the gem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZr2TWiE69I

It was news to me that Lou Reed also wrote a Kiss song (or more than one?).

I'd also rank "Jokerman" among my faves, fwiw

‘Why the fuck would he want to write with me?’

Classic Gene

Kinda reminds me: "Do you play jazz?" He asks his interviewer that in the monster Songwriters on Songwriting, and then describes how he sometimes uses patterns from jazz in writing--by which he may mean adaptation, since he said somewhere else, "First of all, I'm not a melodist." He says a lot of stuff, probably works different ways over the many years etc. Pretty good talk, anyway.
As for collabs, here are brief descriptions of five:
https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/bob-dylans-greatest-collaborations-100538/ Over on Rolling Bootlegs, I think, birdistheword prefers another version of "Brownsville Girl," with a different town in the title, doesn't like the punched-in guitar break, for inst., but I don't mind it, esp. in a patchwork song, from a conversation about trying to remember something in a Gregory Peck Western, also about swap meets etc.
Speaking of his work w Jacques Levy referenced in there, Claudia Levy launched a suit re royalities, but after D. sold his catalog, which. hmmm, don't know how that's turned out---anyway, good coverage here https://www.billboard.com/pro/bob-dylan-lawsuit-co-writer-song-catalog-sale/ (and good comments about that on bob dylan: desire, the poll)
More interesting to me: her friendship with Dylan, incl. before either had met Jacques--she introduced them---and some stuff about working conditions---she should write a book, however things go or have concluded litigation-wise---pretty good interview with her here:https://dylanlive.substack.com/p/jacques-levys-wife-explains-the-late

Oh, re "Jammin' Me," collab w Petty mentioned in that Stone shortie: it was okay, in a predictable way, think it might have been on a 12" single I had w "Band of the Hand," which he may have written all of, though mainly effective as shuffle for group vocals which a movie reviewer compared to a screech own--it was for and recurred in a Michael Mann flick, of the same title as song, I think, pretty much just "Ban-nd of the Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand," with slide etc., but that was enough.

screech owl, I meant.

"Jammin' Me" was Petty and Campbel mostly; Dylan added a few pop culture lines.

I don't know if it's ilx, but Jokerman's chorus sounds like the Top Gun Anthem

"Jammin' Me" was Petty and Campbel mostly; Dylan added a few pop culture lines.

It might be why he rarely performed it (he also hates, incorrectly, Let Me Up).